10-7 Ken Screven Day a hoop dream meme

Former TV journalist's name prompts chant, meme, happy hour

Friends gathered Wednesday, Oct. 7, at a happy hour organized by Jomo Miller, a former WRGB producer, in honor of 10-7, Ken Screven Day at Ship?s Pub on Northern Boulevard in Loudonville, a bar once popular with radio and TV folks. (Photo by Chad Koenig) less

Friends gathered Wednesday, Oct. 7, at a happy hour organized by Jomo Miller, a former WRGB producer, in honor of 10-7, Ken Screven Day at Ship?s Pub on Northern Boulevard in Loudonville, a bar once popular ... more

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Friends gathered Wednesday, Oct. 7, at a happy hour organized by Jomo Miller, a former WRGB producer, in honor of 10-7, Ken Screven Day at Ship?s Pub on Northern Boulevard in Loudonville, a bar once popular with radio and TV folks. (Photo by Chad Koenig) less

Friends gathered Wednesday, Oct. 7, at a happy hour organized by Jomo Miller, a former WRGB producer, in honor of 10-7, Ken Screven Day at Ship?s Pub on Northern Boulevard in Loudonville, a bar once popular ... more

10-7 Ken Screven Day a hoop dream meme

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Albany

Nobody is quite sure how or when it started, but the curious "10-7, Ken Screven" rhyming riff during pickup basketball games when the score reaches 10-7 morphed into a Facebook phenomenon, a social media meme and even a happy hour party on Wednesday.

"I'm stunned by it. It's a little crazy," said Ken Screven, the object of the quirky adulation.

The unexpected online thread grew this week after Screven wrote a blog post Tuesday on timesunion.com that showcased his well-tuned sense of irony and appreciation of the absurd.

"It's really weird and I'm smiling at it, but I also have my eyebrow cocked," said Screven, whose husky baritone broke into a full-throated chortle.

Screven is 65, does not play basketball and never did. He grew up in Queens, graduated from St. John's University with a degree in communications and brought his distinctive voice, often compared to that of actor James Earl Jones, to the Capital Region airwaves in 1976 as a radio reporter for WROW.

The next year, he shifted to television, where his bearish stature, commanding vocal intonation and unflappable presence made him a popular broadcaster and a local celebrity of sorts. He was the first African-American TV reporter in the local market and retired from what's now called CBS6 in 2011 after 34 years.

Around 1980, a young gas station attendant, a white guy, stopped Screven and told him about the thing with his name. When the score of a pickup basketball game, where each basket counted one point, reached 10 to 7, the players in unison chanted "10-7, Ken Screven."

"I thought he was making fun of me," Screven recalled.

He forgot about the long-ago encounter until a few years ago when someone on Facebook created a post on Oct. 7 declaring it 10-7, Ken Screven Day. It turned out the thing had taken on a life of its own across the decades.

"God knows how it started, or where, and I still don't know if it's a black thing or a white thing," Screven said. "I guess it just came about because people knew me from TV and there was the rhyme with my name."

Chad Koenig, 34, of Albany, started saying the rhyme as a middle schooler in the mid-1990s in rec league basketball practices at the Ballston Spa recreation center. "We were suburban white kids and it wasn't said in a mocking or ironic way, it was just what we said," recalled Koenig, who also never knew the provenance of the habit.

Koenig, who hosts trivia nights and runs an entertainment business, became friends with Screven through Facebook a few years ago and now visits Screven at his Center Square apartment regularly.

They continue to scratch their heads over the origin of 10-7, Ken Screven.

"I think it just evolved because Ken is a beloved figure, he has a wonderful voice, he's a huge guy and his name rhymes perfectly with those two numbers," Koenig said. "I don't think we'll ever get to the bottom of it."

"It's nice to be remembered, I suppose," Screven said. "I always hoped my work in TV would leave an impact."

He said the social media comments generated phone calls from his brother, Earl Screven, a retired state computer systems analyst in Bowie, Md., and two nieces in North Carolina.

"I joked with my nieces that I'm finally a big deal in their eyes," Screven said.

Screven made no special plans for his eponymous day. "Just another Wednesday for me," he said, although he planned to meet friends for a late lunch in what he called "a comfortable retirement."

Screven did not attend a Wednesday happy hour organized by Jomo Miller, a former WRGB producer, in honor of 10-7, Ken Screven Day at Ship's Pub on Northern Boulevard in Loudonville, a bar once popular with radio and TV folks. Screven himself went there back in his drinking days. But he's got 22 years of sobriety under his belt and steers clear of taverns nowadays.

"I hope they have a nice time. It's flattering, but still a little strange," he said.